The lithe figure of a runner approached along the banks of the Yarra, silhouetted against the rising sun. But this time, perhaps the third such morning, I was ready with a fellow jogger's wave for the uber-fit Julie Bishop.

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It was November 2007, and given that we were in the latter stages of an election campaign, where leaders, and the travelling media pack, frenetically lace the continent in the hunt for votes, it was unusual that there was time for the establishment of any such pattern.

Yet here we were in Melbourne, again. John Howard was going down. He knew it and his Melbourne-based campaign brains trust knew it too. It was evident in their own research, from the published polls, and simply, from the atmosphere - the Zeitgeist if you will. Voters were calling time on the nearly 12-year-old government, and by extension, they had warmed to the idea of Kevin. Rudd had successfully given them permission to switch, convincing them of his ''fundamental'' economic and social conservatism.

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Scroll forward six tumultuous years and that feeling is there again. This time, however, they have warmed to the idea of Tony, and that, in essence, is the story of the 2013 poll. When this election campaign started, nearly five weeks ago, a narrowly trailing Rudd wanted as many election debates as he could get and Abbott wanted as few as he could get away with.

They were both wrong. Abbott's team angled to minimise the risk. Rudd's team figured, on past performance, that he would easily defeat the aggressive Abbott in head-to-head encounters. Rudd's working assumption was that the more voters saw of the unpopular Abbott, the more they'd shy away.

Voters have warmed up to the idea of a Liberal Party win. Photo: Alex Ellinghausen

In fact, the opposite has occurred through the course of this campaign. By the third debate, the two leaders had more or less switched roles and it was Abbott who appeared calm and reasonable defending foreign investment, and imparting a general sense of assuredness.

In short, the more voters have seen of Abbott during the hyper-exposure of the campaign, the more their historical objections have softened. Voters, it appears, have got used to the notion of Tony Abbott occupying the Lodge.

It was said of Howard's win in 1996 that the times eventually came to suit him - that in a sense, he was the rock, and voters moved to him. The parallel with Abbott is apparent. But politics is a binary business and Abbott's rise is corollary of Rudd's disastrous campaign. Indeed, history is likely to be very hard on Rudd given that his relentless siege of the Gillard leadership carried with it the singular responsibility to do better than she would have. Late into the final week of his frequently shambolic campaign and that is by no means clear. Labor's polling is as bad as it was under Gillard earlier this year. And the Gillard camp has given Rudd the clear air so obviously denied to her.

Rudd mark II's rapid fire ''solutions'' regarding faction reform, scrapping the fixed carbon price, and the asylum seeker deal with PNG, implied he had been thinking long and hard about a re-election strategy.

Yet it has failed to materialise beyond his fourth big announcement: calling the election itself. It turns out, he had a plan to beat Gillard, and not much beyond it.

On Wednesday morning, reporters on the Rudd campaign again found themselves in Melbourne, and again found themselves in the middle of a disorganised Labor campaign.

Warehoused for hours as Rudd (somewhere else) made unheralded appearances on TV and radio, there was an unmistakable sense in the travelling media pack that the time spent in Melbourne is more about sandbagging Labor seats rather than winning Coalition ones.